Public safety and addressing a well-worn roadway were on the agenda at the La Grange Park Village Board meeting Tuesday.
The board unanimously approved renewing an agreement between the police department and the Major Case Assistance Team.
“This make sense,” Trustee Amanda Seidel said after presenting the resolution to the Board for a vote. “It’s a great collaboration we have with MCAT.”
MCAT is a multi-jurisdictional task force in which member villages agree to share detective/investigators with participating departments in the event of major crimes.
Its 14 member villages are generally located in the Southwestern Suburbs, with rough boundaries of North Riverside on the North, Willow Springs South, Western Springs West, and Forest View East.
La Grange Park’s renewed participation agreement is made necessary by MCAT’s bylaws requiring a formal renewal when new departments join. Justice recently joined MCAT, requiring Tuesday’s vote.
Seidel said that MCAT had assisted the La Grange Park department in two cases the previous year.
Police Chief Tim Contois spoke to the value of MCAT after the meeting, noting that the 2021 cases the organization was involved in included one with an unlawful discharge of a weapon and another involving a “ruse” burglary.
The Village Clerk swore in and “pinned” three new paid-on-call firefighters, including Matt Holmes, who finished his probationary period in 2020 but was only sworn in virtually then because of COVID-19.
Lou Galvez and Colin McManus completed their probationary periods in January of this year.
All three have completed the Basic Operations Fire Academy, making them Illinois State-Certified Firefighters and completed emergency medical services training, earning the classification EMT-B (basic).
“To be a paid on-call firefighter in our community takes a lot of work,” Fire Chief Dean J. Maggos said before the ceremony.
The Board approved, also unanimously, a resolution beginning the process of obtaining federal aid for the eventual reconstruction of 26th Avenue in the North End of the Village.
The section of 26th Avenue between Kemman and Maple avenues has long been a bypass for motorists looking for a way to avoid heavy traffic and slower roadways when entering or driving through the Village.
The result has been that the avenue has “taken abuse over the years,” Director of Public Works Rick Radde said.
The resolution actually allows the village to request that the Illinois Department of Transportation reclassify the road to being a “minor collector” roadway, meaning it would now exist as a main road connecting nearby villages and towns.
As Trustee Bob Lautner noted, the reclassification “would place this roadway in the queue for future federal funding.”
The Village’s FY 2022-23 budget includes finding in the amount of $350,000 for the immediate resurfacing of the road, but Radde described that as a “bandaid” solution, instead of properly reconstructing the roadway, which he noted would likely not take place for another decade.
But he did say that the immediate resurfacing would be sufficient for at least a decade.
The next La Grange Park Village Board workshop and budget hearing will be at 7:15 p.m. April 12 at 447 N. Catherine Ave. in the Village Boardroom.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
